It is apparent that Intel is extremely excited about the upcoming Conroe architecture

AnandTech today had an hour alone with Conroe and an overclocked AMD Athlon 64 FX-60. Intel had two systems available for testing: the first computer was an Athlon 64 FX-60 overclocked to 2.8GHz running on a DFI RD480 motherboard. The other system was a Conroe running at 2.66GHz on an Intel 975X motherboard. Anand compared several video games: Quake 4, Half Life 2 - Lost Coast, Unreal Tournament 2004, and F.E.A.R. Along with the video games, Windows Media Encoder 9, DivX 6.1, and iTunes 6.0.1.3 were also tested.

While we're still comparing to Socket-939 and only using RD480, it does seem very unlikely that AMD would be able to make up this much of a deficit with Socket-AM2 and RD580. Especially looking at titles like F.E.A.R. where Conroe's performance advantage averages over 40%, it looks like Intel's confidence has been well placed.

When the tests were finished, it was obvious that AMD will have a lot of work to do if it wants to try and match the performance from Conroe.

"Well, we didn't have anyone in line that got shot waiting for our system." -- Nintendo of America Vice President Perrin Kaplan